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Game News Wasteland 2's Delay: All About Making Choice Matter

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: InXile Entertainment; Wasteland 2

Rock Paper Shotgun's Nathan Grayson recently paid a visit to inXile, where he learned what the Wasteland 2 team was planning to do with the extra time they have after the announcement that the game would be delayed. I'll let the article speak for itself:

“We’re really hanging our hat on reactivity,” inXile CEO Brian Fargo told RPS during a recent studio visit. “Reactivity and choice. The scope and scale of the game, and the reactivity part is an absolute part of [the delay]. The levels are all fundamentally in, and all we’re doing is sitting around all day saying, ‘What about this? What about this? What about that?’ We watch people playing the game, and they come up with a clever way to do something, we want to accommodate that. That’s why with role-playing games, we can do difficult puzzles. It’s not like an adventure game where you hit a stop and you’re just done. I can level up and get around something. Brute force it. Blow it up. Find another route.”​

But just how far-reaching can differences between different playthroughs be? Well, you know how Witcher 2 received 427 Nobel Peace Prizes for its billion-headed hydra of a second act? Think that, but in many, many, many more locations.“We want to make those changes all the way to the last second. Some of that requires dialogue. I think that’s why you’ve seen some role-playing games become more cinematic. They’ve got to lock and load the audio five or six months before it’s done. So you can’t make changes like that. For us, we’ll be making those changes until the last second.”​

“We aren't shy about shutting off entire levels of gameplay,” said project lead Chris Keenan. “We really wanted to make that happen.”​

“We have so many sequences,” added inXile president Matt Findley. “About half the game, most people will never see. We’re not afraid at all to create content that’s off the critical path or can be closed off permanently.”​

Quite the contrary, actually. Fargo and co are embracing their newfound ability to create with one hand and destroy with the other. Unlike many developers who want to wrestle control away from your hands so they can [Aladdin music] show you the world, the entire point of Wasteland 2 is that you’re in the driver’s seat.​

“On the biggest level,” Fargo continued, “there will be areas that will be completely different. Gone, destroyed. There’s not one just like it to make up for it. It’s just gone.”​

“And we show the reactivity,” Keenan said. “If you go to one area, you start to hear radio calls from the other. They’re getting taken over, and if you try to veer back, you see the destruction from that, and they’re in a completely different state. For instance, if you’re too late to a call, maybe robots took it out. If you go there, you’re gonna see carnage. Piles of dead bodies. No robots left to kill because they've moved on.”​

Oh yes oh yes oh yes. There'll be more about Wasteland 2 and Torment from RPS this week, so stay tuned.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Sounds good. Of course the butthurt from the usual crowd will be enormous.


Right on cue, my Bohemian buddy: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...l-about-making-choice-matter/#comment-1315464


I don’t know how important I think choice is. I mean done well choice and consequences in a game can draw the player into the script or into the role they play and provoke thought about their actions, but a lot of the time it just means that you won’t see all of the game if you don’t have the time-luxury of a replay, or miss out on bits of the game you might have enjoyed more than the bit you got.

I was a real fan of ‘The Walking Dead’s” illusion of choice: the experience of choice was something that drew you into the story and connected you with it in a way only interactive fiction can, the consequences were how you felt about your actions, but behind the curtain your choices had less in-game consequence then it might appear and less of the product was wasted because of them.

I guess I think choice is more important than consequence for me: If an NPC was dangling off a cliff my experience of choosing either to desperately grab his hand before he fell off or to stamp on his fingers until he fell would let me role-play my character, personalise my experience and immerse myself in the game, despite the fact that with either choice the NPC died.

David Gaider Brofisted this.
 

Jashiin

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Fuck the usual crowd. We paid for this, they can have their dragon effect 10. And every sale fargo gets from one of these whiners is just pure bonus. :smug:
 

communard

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Sounds good. Of course the butthurt from the usual crowd will be enormous.


Right on cue, my Bohemian buddy: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...l-about-making-choice-matter/#comment-1315464


A load of industrial grade wank.

David Gaider Brofisted this.


Sweet Baby Jesus people actually think like this? Computer games as the worst kind of egregious LARPing rolled up in mediocre Hollywood movie making with a rancid semen glaze and that shit is something to aspire to? What a fucking turdmongler. He should just go read some visual novels. At least they have rape and cute girls. What a deluded twatmeister. I hope he dies of syphilis.
 

Lancehead

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LARPing, imagining there's some consequence to what you're doing when there's none, is not what the guy prefers.
 

evdk

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Codex 2012 Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Sounds good. Of course the butthurt from the usual crowd will be enormous.


Right on cue, my Bohemian buddy: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...l-about-making-choice-matter/#comment-1315464


A load of industrial grade wank.

David Gaider Brofisted this.


Sweet Baby Jesus people actually think like this? Computer games as the worst kind of egregious LARPing rolled up in mediocre Hollywood movie making with a rancid semen glaze and that shit is something to aspire to? What a fucking turdmongler. He should just go read some visual novels. At least they have rape and cute girls. What a deluded twatmeister. I hope he dies of syphilis.
Bitch please. Fate Stay Night cuts out half the content depending on the route you pick.
 

weresheeple

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You're right. I apologize. Clearly even some of the least gamey games in existence would be too much for this poor fellow.
Considering that the guy was complaining about consequences preventing him from experiencing the whole game in a single play-through, yes, they would be.
 

Roguey

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I see inXile's really sticking with the "cut off content" idea of reactivity. :roll:

Maybe it's for the best, RPGs tend to err on the side of being too long anyway.
 

Cowboy Moment

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Quite surprised Grayson himself managed to resist the temptation to mention The Walking Dead as the pinnacle of video game storytelling.

And even after you explained to BN Sawyer's position on that. Philistines.

What is Sawyer's position on it? That everyone should be able to see everything in one playthrough?
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
What is Sawyer's position on it? That everyone should be able to see everything in one playthrough?

Sawyer's design philosophy or "Sawyerism" doesn't really apply to game content - narrative, choices, etc - for the most part. It's more about systems.

AFAIK in terms of content he thinks Fallout is the bee's knees.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Sawyer's design philosophy or "Sawyerism" doesn't really apply to game content - narrative, choices, etc - for the most part. It's more about systems.
http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2012/03/do-say-right-thing-choice-architecture.html


Fair enough, but this advice of his seems to be framed in the context of a relatively constrained AAA-type game with limited player agency. Something with dialogue wheels. I'm not sure how relevant it is to W2 or PE.
 

MuscleSpark

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If you go to one area, you start to hear radio calls from the other. They’re getting taken over, and if you try to veer back, you see the destruction from that, and they’re in a completely different state. For instance, if you’re too late to a call, maybe robots took it out. If you go there, you’re gonna see carnage. Piles of dead bodies. No robots left to kill because they’ve moved on.
...
What if, for instance, you disobey Ranger orders to the point of becoming a liability? You become a pariah. Your own organization turns on you, hunts you. The entire game changes. And then, of course, there’s the extra-colossal, radiation-mutated elephant in the room: you can kill anyone, anytime. And sometimes – for example, if a party member won’t stop selling your stuff for booze money – you might have to.
My dick is diamonds.
 

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